Lyell once told me that in spite of his father's pursuits - his long residence near the famous botanical locality of Clova, and the frequent visits of Sir William Hooker, he never took kindly to botanical studies. But he at the same time said that if Darwin's works on Orchids, on Climbing Plants, on Dimorphians &c had been published he thought it would have been quite otherwise. Next to the Origin of Species, Lyell considered the "Fertilization of Orchids" as the most valuable of all Darwin's works, and yet it was the only one which was considered by the publishers at the time as a failure.